RI vows to implement fully the CWC
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Indonesia, the third largest democracy in the world, is committed to fully implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), said a senior official at the ministry of foreign affairs.
"Indonesia, which is in the process of full democratization, will be in a better position to fully implement the Chemical Weapons Convention," Makmur Widodo, director general for multilateral political, social and security affairs at the ministry of foreign affairs, said on Tuesday while opening a seminar on the "Implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)" in Jakarta.
Makmur said Indonesia, which signed the CWC on Jan. 13, 1993 and ratified it on Sept. 30, 1998 and enacted it into the Law No. 6/1998, is committed to fully implementing the CWC.
"As a party to the CWC, Indonesia is legally bound to fully implement the provisos of the convention. Indeed, Indonesia is now in the process of doing just that," Makmur said.
The CWC, which came into force on April 29, 1997, is an international treaty that bans the use of chemical weapons and aims to eliminate chemical weapons, everywhere in the world, forever.
Even after more than five years since the ratification of the CWC, Indonesia is still trying to implement it fully.
The problems, according to Makmur, are mainly two: the establishment of a permanent national authority and passing of 'a unified robust national legislation' to cover and govern all aspects of the use of chemical substances.
Indonesia currently has a temporary national authority under the coordination of the directorate for international peace and disarmament at the foreign ministry.
Under the CWC, the member countries must make it part of its national legislation before 2005.
Hassan Kleib, a foreign ministry official, shared Makmur's view at the seminar -- attended by diplomats, international experts and people representing non-governmental organizations as well as the private sector -- that the national legislation was needed to tighten the importation of chemical substances so as to enable the authority to control the influx of such substances.
"As a member party of CWC, we have to submit our annual report of the imports and exports of the chemical substances to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)," he said.
The Hague-based OPCW is an independent international organization, which was established in 1997 by the countries that have joined the CWC to make sure that the Convention works effectively and achieves its purpose.
The two-day seminar -- which was organized by the Indonesian foreign ministry in collaboration with the Technical Secretariat of the OPCW -- aimed at preparing the ground work for the establishment of Indonesian Permanent National Authority and speeding up the national legislation on the usage of chemical substances.